An Imbalance of Humors

Teal Deer (TL; DR)

“An Imbalance of Humors”

I got a little bit in my feelings this week—part of which can be attributed to gummies. This is, after all, Romancing the Stoned. However, a larger and more messy part was about how I present myself on the internet and whether it’s at all effective. Because here’s the thing: Platforms like Twitter and Bluesky are my only avenue for marketing. I am all that sells my books.

 A lot of what I post on social media is off the cuff. I certainly have enough random thoughts to fill and sink the Titanic. Some other things, I workshop and stick in drafts for later. But in either case, it is deliberate on my part. For 13 years, I have cultivated and grown this annoyingly punny and sometimes thought-provoking persona. For a while there, I was also incredibly mental unhealthy and that, too, was a part of what I was presenting. It was a conscious choice to share that ugliness—and a survival mechanism. As John Astin used to say on Night Court, “But I’m feeling much better now.”

While I’m healing from a lot of dysfunctional crap , I’ve been focusing more on sharing my political/real-world thoughts and just being ridiculous and shitpost-y. Am I like this in real life? Absolutely. The social media posts are a concentrated and curated version that’s meant to entertain or inform more than just myself. That it’s largely improvised is because that’s just how my neurodivergent brain works. Word association takes me to the strangest places. I like bringing others to those places with me. But, yeah, there’s a slightly mercenary angle in it as well. Making people laugh, making yourself memorable, is no easy task. Particularly when you’re depending on your winning personality to sell a book or two. It’s work. 

So, when a few people benignly suggested that Chuck Tingle take one of my silly Bluesky posts and run with it as a book, it felt like needles across my spine and just vibrated right through me. (Again, there was weed involved.) Chuck Tingle is a phenomenon, and I so deeply respect how hard he has worked to expand his career from butt poundings to young adult horror. He has a very specific voice and a very specific brand of humor. If Dr. Tingle wanted to write Pounded in the Butt By a Bavarian Pretzel, I’d actually be thrilled. But in that particular moment, I just felt like all my years of working to be funny on the internets didn’t matter. It doesn’t sell your books. It doesn’t sell you. Nobody knows who you are. It stung extra because it’s hard for women of color to break out. And here people were, trying to gift my home-grown silliness to a white person—one who is already successful from doing their own thing. My own thing clearly wasn’t enough. Oof.

Some of this is stuff I’ve been working through in therapy and has no business in a newsletter—self-esteem issues, past workplace trauma, never feeling validated, etc. I don’t want y’all to bill me by the hour. But there’s an aspect that’s very much public and profession related. I had a shot at being more successful than I currently am. Tikka Chance on Me was in Entertainment Weekly in 2018 (thank you, Maureen Lee Lenker). Big Bad Wolf got shouted out in EW more than once and in the New York Times online (thank you, Olivia Waite). I coulda been somebody. I coulda been a contender. What I did was crash, as many writers do. But at least I still had my social media presence. I’ve kept writing and publishing, but sometimes @suleikhasnyder is all I have. “No royalties this month, but I made this person snort-laugh at 9:30AM. Win!” Hefty royalty payments would be preferable, let’s be real, but causing a spit-take or an all-caps “SULEIKHA!” is its own reward.

Rebuilding on Bluesky has been challenging. I have more traction there, but fewer than 3,000 followers—compared to Twitter, where I had 14K. So, yeah, obviously there are people in this new space who don’t know who I am, who don’t know that it’s my Thing to be irreverent at the drop of a hat. It’s a tiny bit of a burn, but I have no illusions about my general popularity. Half those Twitter followers were probably bots. Still, then, why can’t I be taken as a fresh, funny, voice in my own right? Regardless of what I’ve written or where it’s been reviewed. I don’t know. I’m always asking questions I don’t have answers for. I don’t know if I’ll ever regain the tiny amount of recognition and traction that I had before. Hell, I don’t even know if it really sells books!

I can only hope—and I can joke.

Pot Bunnies*

What if there was a tsunami in Lake Michigan? Why would there be a tsunami in Lake Michigan?

Wouldn’t it be great if Edgar Wright wrote and directed a mystery movie starring Edgar Ramirez and Daisy Edgar-Jones and it won an Edgar award?

*Logged high, shared later.